Red State "Moral Values"

We all know about hypocrites like the thrice divorced, drug addict Rush Limbaugh talking about "moral values", but what about the Red States themselves? Well David Markham over at Markham's Behavioral Health helps us out there.

• Red states have much higher alcohol fatality rates than blue states

  Montana tops the list with 1.22 deaths followed by South Carolina with 1.17.
  
  The safest states to drive in as far as alcohol related fatalities are concerned are New York with a rate over three times better than Montana at .36, Maine with .35, Utah with .30, and Vermont with .28.
  
  The top 24 most dangerous states to drive in are all Red states
  
  Seven of the least dangerous 10 states are Blue States.
  
  Over 2/3rds of the the alcohol related fatalities in the United States occur in Red states.



• Red states have much higher teen birth rates than blue states

  Another indicator we might take a look at is teen pregnancy rates, and I predicted that teen pregnancy rates would be higher in red states than they are in blue states and I found this to be overwhelmingly true. So, it makes one wonder whether these folks "walk" the "talk". It doesn't appear that they do. And while they rail against the northeastern and west coast "liberals", it appears when you look at the data that these "liberals" do walk the talk.
  
  So, I found in my analysis that the first 16 states with the highest teen birth rates are red states with Mississippi leading the way with 64.7 teen births per 1,000 followed by Texas with 64.4 births per 1,000.
  
  Nine out of ten the states with the lowest teen birth rates were blue states led by New Hampshire with a rate of 20.0 per 1,000 more than 2/3rds less than Mississippi and Massachusetts with a rate of 23.3 per 1,000. Clearly the "liberal states do much better on this indicator and other indicators of "family values" such as divorce rates than red states.

  In addition the Red States have a much higher divorce rate.

  ....divorce rates are higher in red states than blue states even though they passed resolutions banning gay marriage because they supposedly want to protect marriage which they don't practice.



• Red states perform 96% of excecutions in the US since 1976

  Evangelical Christians are given a lot of credit for swinging the election for George Bush and they claim to be pro-life and yet when we look at the data regarding capital punishment we find some very interesting things which contradict that claim.
  
  True pro life Christians espouse what is called a "consistent life ethic" meaning that they are opposed to all forms of violence against human beings including abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and militarism.
  
  So, a naive observer might think that Red states would be consistent in their pro life moral values and hypothesize that executions would be lower in Red states than blue states since they are pro life. The data tells quite a different story.
  
  In the United States capital punishment is a state issue and 38 states provide for capital punishment although six of those 38 states have not used it since 1976. Of the 32 states that have executed people since 1976 25 are Red states and 7 are Blue states so over 3 times as many Red states have executed people than Blue states.

It would appear that like their spokesman, Rush Limbaugh, the Red States are a lot better a talking the talk then they are walking the walk. I have thought all along that the anti-gay stand was about phobia and prejudice rather than "moral values".